12 OCTOBER 2026 WorldWide Drilling Resource® by Rod Bartholomew, submitted by Gary Bartholomew In the middle of a portable dental clinic set up in La Compuerta in northern Guatemala, I had a life-impacting experience. Around 11:00 a.m., I noticed a woman approaching through the crowd. She was carrying a small child, a girl about five years old. Even before she reached me, something about the way she walked communicated urgency. When she arrived, I could see the child was not well. She was limp in her mother's arms, unresponsive - not fully comatose, but dangerously close. Her skin was warm with a slight fever. More concerning was her lack of responsiveness. It was clear that without intervention, she would not live. The mother's face carried a kind of fear that doesn't need translation. Through a chain of translation - Q'eqchi' to Spanish to English and back again - we pieced together the history. The child had been feverish for a little more than a week. There were no clear answers beyond that. I stopped what I was doing with my current dental patient, but kept them in the chair as I assessed the situation as best I could. I had no diagnostic equipment beyond a thermometer and a blood pressure cuff. My training was dental, not pediatric medicine, and suddenly I was being asked, implicitly, to make sense of something far outside my expertise. I asked the questions I could think of: bowel movements, signs of internal bleeding, urination, and so on. The answers I received suggested normal output. This response moved me away from what should have been an obvious consideration. I was thinking about infectious disease possibilities like malaria, systemic infection, and organ dysfunction. I worked through all the possibilities I had experienced during a life of mission service, and yet I was missing something fundamental which should have been right in front of me. Dehydration didn't even register as a possibility. We stopped and prayed as a group, asking for wisdom and guidance and that God would spare the life of this child. It was then I unexpectedly recalled an article I had read some time earlier which mentioned severe chronic dehydration can sometimes present with low-grade fever and profound lethargy in children. That memory shifted everything. Given the context - no clean water, widespread poverty, families dependent on contaminated sources or expensive substitutes - suddenly made sense in a way nothing else had. We acted immediately, taking a large cup of about 16 ounces and filled it with clean drinking water we had personally brought. At first, the child could not drink. So the mother dipped a corner of cloth into the water and placed it gently in the child's mouth. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the child began to respond. Within minutes, there was a change. Her eyes opened. Her swallowing reflex strengthened. She leaned toward the water. and we allowed her to drink directly from the cup - not much at first, but steadily increasing. Ten minutes passed, then 20. She finished the first cup completely and we refilled it. Then something remarkable happened. She drank again, this time with urgency. It was as if her body, once it understood what it was receiving, could not get enough. Within 30 to 45 minutes, she was completely transformed. The limp, unresponsive child who had been carried to us was now alert. She pushed away from being held. She stood. Then walked. Shortly, she began playing with the other children nearby as though nothing had happened. In the moment, it felt unreal - not because I didn't believe the science of hydration, but because the contrast was so immediate, so visible, so absolute. I had to step away from the clinic for a moment. I remember tears coming to my eyes as I tried to process what I had just witnessed. And what struck me most was not only the medical reality of dehydration, but the broader reality that people need "Water for Life." Other children around noticed and also asked for water. We gave all we had, but it wasn't enough - not even close. My experience in La Compuerta is not an isolated case. It was a symptom of an entire environment where clean water in Guatemala is often unavailable and where children pay the price. It made the work of Water for Life feel even more urgent than before. Every well drilled, every failed attempt, every success - it all mattered in ways which were difficult to fully quantify. We later received the report, and the news was simple but profound: for the first time in memory, an entire year had passed without the loss of a single child in La Compuerta. This is what clean water does; it gives life. If you would like to help, contact Gary Bartholomew at 509-939-1941. Gary Gary Bartholomew may be contacted via e-mail to michele@worldwidedrillingresource.com Luke’s Military Museum was established in Danville, Vermont, by teenager Luke Morrison in 2024. The museum itself has military ties since it was built in the 1850s and belonged to Luke’s greatgreat uncle who was involved in the Burma Campaign during World War II. Luke collects military items whether past or present. A video of the museum can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdhEwCjOfBQ If you would like to contribute items, e-mail: lukesmilitarymuseumvt@gmail.com
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